


Corporeal

by platoapproved



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Blow Jobs, F/M, Fluff, Ghosts, Halloween, M/M, Platonic Sex, Porn, Skateboarding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-04-29 05:18:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5116922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/platoapproved/pseuds/platoapproved
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The gang does a ritual to make Noah corporeal for Halloween night. Shenanigans ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ritual

**Author's Note:**

> Just a bit of light-hearted fun. I'll hopefully be adding chapters throughout the day (depending on how busy things get). I might not have the WHOLE thing done before Halloween is over, but I will do my best! Rating is for later chapters - it's all pretty tame at the moment.

  
  


Technically, it was all Gansey’s fault.

“So I have a crazy idea,” he announced, leaning back against the garish orange plastic of a booth at Nino’s. His friends, arrayed around the table, waited for him to elaborate: Adam, suspicious; Blue, intrigued; Ronan, ready for anything, hoping for trouble; Noah, worried.

“Researching over the years, I’ve come across a lot of dead ends. Stuff that was interesting but not all that useful for finding Glendower.” It was clear from the way Gansey spoke that he had been thinking about this moment, planning his words in advance. He had a way of telling stories that made you hang on every word. “Naturally, there were a lot of rituals to do with spirits of the dead. How to communicate with them, how to summon them—”

“Oh, good, are we finally swapping Noah out for a newer model?” Ronan interrupted, his grin sharp-edged. Noah flipped him off without any particular vehemence; he was used to Ronan’s sense of humor.

“Not quite. But this is about you, Noah,” Gansey said, looking over at Noah. The eyes of the others followed.

“Does this have something to do with the date today?” Adam guessed, shrewdly.

“Just so happens, it does. On Halloween, the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is supposed to be at its thinnest, right? Well, a couple weeks ago, I came across a ritual that supposedly can make a ghost corporeal, if you perform it at sunset on Halloween. Now, it only lasts until the sun comes up, but that’s a good twelve hours, at this time of year. The ritual is fairly simple, so I was thinking maybe tonight…”

“I’m in,” Blue said, before he could even finish. “I mean. If that’s something you want, Noah.”

Noah chewed on his lip, shy and uncertain as ever. He didn’t know what to say. It was strange, having friends who knew what he was and cared about him enough to risk unknown magic just for the chance of giving him a body for a night.

“Is it dangerous?” Noah asked. The last thing he wanted was for any of them to hurt themselves trying to make him happy. He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself, if that happened.

“It doesn’t sound like it. We’ll have to do it at your grave, though we don’t need to stay there all night. It’s mostly just candles and, uh. A few small things like that.”

Gansey was being evasive, so Noah knew he couldn’t be telling the whole truth. But before he could call him on it, Blue said, “I can run the idea by Calla and Persephone first and ask if they think it is safe?”

Everyone agreed that this was the best course of action, so when they had finished their lunch, Gansey and Blue headed off to 300 Fox Way. Adam had to go back to work, but he promised that he’d clock out early so he could be with them at sunset.

“Guess that just leaves us to buy the supplies,” Ronan said, throwing an arm over Noah’s shoulders.

“Supplies?” Noah asked, skeptical. Somehow, he had a feeling Ronan wasn’t talking about candles.

“ _Supplies_ ,” Ronan confirmed.

By the time they pulled up to the ruined church in the Pig, the undersides of the clouds that streaked the sky were stained with orange. A chill wind had started up, sending flurries of leaves flying, tossing the heads of the trees. All around them, the dried bean pods of the catalpas rattled eerily, and the sound made Noah shiver. 

“I hate this place,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck as he got out of the car. Blue was staring towards the door to the church, arms crossed tightly over her chest. Noah felt the sadness coming from her and knew what she was remembering: Gansey’s ghost, shoulder’s wet from the rain, falling to his knees. He wished he knew how to comfort her.

“We need to hurry,” Gansey said, “It’s nearly sunset.”

Arms full of candles, he strode over to the place where they had buried Noah early that summer. The rest of them followed him, watching with tense excitement as he arranged the candles near the stone that marked the grave. When he had placed them all, Ronan began to light them. With each candle, Noah felt the pulse of the ley line through him growing stronger, warmer somehow.

“Oh,” he said, very quietly. Blue was watching him closely, the flickering light from the flames making her face strange, and terrible, and beautiful. She had one hand on Ronan’s arm as he struck the matches, and another on Adam’s, as he started to crumble dried herbs over the grave. Noah wanted to ask what they were, but his voice seemed to be stuck in his throat. Was it going to work? Could it possibly?

The wind was blowing harder, now, and the sound from the trees was almost a roar. Noah swallowed back fear. Gansey, who had gone back to the car, returned with something held behind his back.

“There’s just one more thing,” he said, bringing his hands forward. In them was a small clay bowl, and a roll of gauze. Next to him, Blue flicked open her pink switchblade. “We need some blood.”

“Gansey, you said—” Noah protested, but Blue held up a hand to silence him.

“Noah, it’s fine. There’s no way Calla would have given us the go-ahead if it weren’t perfectly safe.” When Noah still looked scared, Blue added, more quietly, “Please, just let us do this for you.”

Noah nodded, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake.

They each took turns with the knife, piercing the insides of arms just beneath the elbow and letting the blood run into the bowl for a few seconds. In the failing light, it looked dark, more black than red.

“This is the weirdest blood drive I’ve ever been to,” Ronan commented. He was the last to go, and when Blue had finished bandaging his arm, the bowl was half full.

“Now, we pour about half of this on the grave and, uh—” Gansey looked away from Noah, guilty and uncomfortable, “—you drink the other half.”

“Are you kidding me!” Noah said, at once. If he had known about all this, he definitely wouldn’t have agreed to go along. What was it with his friends tricking him shady rituals?

Noah watched as Gansey and Blue poured out half the blood. The moment it hit the soil, he felt a wave of dizziness; he would have fallen, if Adam had not caught him and held him up. It felt as if the earth were tilting beneath Noah’s feet, and his vision had gone blurry. He tried to reach for the bowl, but he was too weak to lift his arms.

“Let me,” Ronan said, taking it and bringing it to Noah’s lips for him.

“This is so fucking gross,” Noah muttered, but what was he going to do? They had already all bled for him. How could he say no? Besides, if it would make this vertigo go away, he was willing to try anything.

It had been years since Noah had tasted anything, and it didn’t help that the blood was still lukewarm. It felt thicker than he’d expected, and Noah grimaced all the way through. It took three swallows to get it all down. 

“Here,” Ronan said, setting aside the now-empty bowl and pulling a small bottle from the coat of his jacket. He untwisted the cap and put it to Noah’s lips, tipping the liquid in. It was whiskey. “To get rid of the taste.”

It burned all the way down Noah’s throat, and he made a wordless noise of disgust, but at least it was better than the blood.

Slowly, the dizziness went away. He felt himself getting heavier, could tell from the way Adam shifted his footing that he felt it, too. The pulse of the ley line in him changed, until Noah realized it was a heartbeat.

Blue reached over to touch his cheek, over the place where the smudge should be. Only it had vanished.

“You’re warm,” she said, with quiet wonder.


	2. Adam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I didn’t get the whole fic done on Halloween, or even close to it, but at least I started then, and that counts for something, right? I will continue this, I'm just slow. This chapter took a while, too, because Adam and Noah is a hard dynamic for me to write, but I hope this does them justice!

The mood in the car was electric with happiness as they drove back to Henrietta. Noah had gotten over the unpleasantness of the ritual quickly, and now his wonder and joy at being in a living body was infectious.

“This is so _weird_ ,” he said for around the millionth time, pressing the tips of his fingers to his cheeks. He hadn’t realized how dulled his senses had been, until they’d been restored to him. Everything was so sharp and bright and solid and immediate. He felt as if his whole body were a live wire. He couldn’t seem to stop grinning.

“Are you somehow drunk?” Ronan asked, scornful and fond. “I only gave you a sip, is your tolerance really that shit?”

“I was getting drunk while you were still in elementary school,” Noah countered, and Blue laughed. Most of the time she forgot that Noah was born half a dozen years before the rest of them. He had not aged since he’d died, but even excluding those years, she was pretty sure he was still the oldest. It never felt like it, though. Not with Gansey in the group, and Noah so childlike in his enthusiasms and honesty. 

Bored with touching his own face, Noah ran a hand over the short, prickly fuzz of Ronan’s buzzcut. Ronan went still, looking carefully bored and disinterested, which of course meant that he wasn’t either of those things.

“You have no idea how strange this feels,” Noah said, to the car in general.

“What, my hair?” Ronan said, because it was easier to joke than to acknowledge the elation and sadness that were threatening to overflow inside him. Ronan had spent plenty of time coaxing flashes of happiness from Noah, but he’d never seen him like this. It would be wonderful, if Ronan could only stop remembering that it was temporary.

“Good strange?” Gansey asked from the driver’s seat, worried and hopeful.

“Good strange,” Noah confirmed. Blue curled herself around his arm, laid her head on his shoulder. Their knees were pressed together, and it was no closer than their habitual clinginess, but since he was alive, it seemed different.

“It’s like— it’s like—” but Noah broke off, just shaking his head. He was never going to be able to describe it to any of them. They didn’t know what it felt like to be dead, so how could he even hope to make them understand? He just laughed and said, “I forgot how good it felt.”

The lights of Henrietta were beautiful, suspended in the blue dusk. As they drew nearer Adam, ever the practical one, asked, “So, what’s the plan for the night?”

“Party ‘til morning!” Ronan said, thumping a hand against the roof of the Pig in jubilation. “Obviously! We’ve got to help Noah make the most of his remaining—” he checked his watch “—eleven and a half hours!”

Blue suggested, “I looked up directions to the haunted corn maze this morning, but—”

“A haunted corn maze!” Gansey interrupted, sounding as if he had never heard something so charmingly provincial. Blue resisted the urge to punch the back of his head.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Should I have suggested something a bit more typically Aglionby, like getting drunk and vandalizing local businesses?”

“Jane—”

“I can’t stay up all night,” Adam interrupted, before Gansey and Blue could get into a full-blown fight. “I’m sorry, Noah, but I’ve got work tomorrow morning.” He had already left early tonight; he couldn’t afford to skip his Sunday shift. Adam envied how Gansey and Ronan could decide pull an all-nighter at a moment’s notice.

Without ceremony or self-consciousness, Noah slipped his hand into Adam’s, squeezing it gently. It surprised Adam; he couldn’t remember the last time someone had held his hand, and Noah did it as if it were the easiest, most natural thing in the world.

“Yeah, me too,” Blue said. With the last of her irritation, she added, “Which I was about to say, before Gansey interrupted me.”

“I don’t really want to do anything scary,” Noah said. They could tease him for being a coward if they wanted – he didn’t care. “Why don’t you three go do that and Adam and I can hang out until you get back?” 

Noah didn’t ask whether Adam wanted to go to the corn maze; neither of them found being scared very fun, even in the most artificial of contexts.

“Sure,” Adam agreed, privately grateful.

Before he dropped Adam and Noah off, Gansey insisted on Ronan giving them his phone, since neither of them had one.

“Just in case,” he said. “Besides, it might be nice to call that number and have someone actually pick up.”

Ronan grinned, head lolling against the window, totally unashamed.

Adam pocketed the phone, uncomfortably aware of how expensive it was. Boys at Aglionby were constantly breaking their smartphones and blithely returning the next day with new ones. Someday, he would be able to afford to be that careless, but for today, he was going to treat the thing like it was made of fine-spun glass.

“What do I do if Declan calls?” Adam asked,

“Dick pic,” Ronan suggested, concisely.

“Hit ignore,” Gansey said, as if Ronan hadn’t spoken. And then he was driving off, leaving Noah and Adam alone together outside St. Agnes.

“We could get food?” Adam suggested, voice carefully neutral. He knew that anything they bought would need to be his treat, since Noah had no money whatsoever. Adam had gotten his paycheck the day before, so he could cover it for the time being, but it would cause strain later in the month. Still, it might be kind of nice, for once, to be the generous one.

“I’m too excited to be hungry,” Noah said. He looked it, too, shifting his weight from foot to foot, full of restless with energy. “But I know a place I’d like to go.”

So the two of them climbed into Adam’s patchwork car and Noah gave him directions. It was the same route that he took to get to Aglionby, but they stopped a few blocks short.

“Here!” Noah exclaimed, beaming. Behind a chain-link fence was Henrietta’s skate park. It was nothing very special: just a few ramps and rails, but there was a clusters of boys there, some skating, some lounging around with their boards at their feet, smoking and laughing uproariously. Adam thought he recognized a few of the faces from the halls at Aglionby.

“You haven’t got a board,” Adam pointed out.

“Someone will lend me one,” Noah said, getting out of the car and heading in through the gate. His confidence surprised Adam. He wondered if this was how Noah had been before he was murdered: confident instead of timid, unfazed by obstacles. Adam followed him, catching up just when—as predicted—one of the smoking boys offered Noah his skateboard.

“Parrish,” another of the boys said. Adam didn’t remember his name, though he was pretty sure they’d sat next to each other in AP Biology. “I didn’t know you skated.”

“I don’t,” Adam said. When he was younger, skateboarding had been an easy and reliable excuse to give when an adult asked about his bruises, but he had never actually tried it. Skating was something that cool people did with their cool friends, and Adam had always had a sense that, even if he had been able to afford a board, other skaters would know him for a fraud.

Noah was coasting around on the borrowed skateboard in lazy loops, getting a feel for it. It came back to him easily, as if no time had passed at all. He had forgotten how much he loved this. Delighted, he laughed, and picked up speed.

“Why’re you in your uniform?” one of the boys asked.

Adam, who was the much quicker liar, answered for Noah, “Oh, it’s mine. He’s not actually Aglionby, it’s just his costume.”

They accepted this explanation without question. Someone offered him a cigarette, but he waved it off, eyes locked on Noah as he finally sped off towards the obstacles. The boys’ conversation topic shifted to Halloween generally, but Adam wasn’t listening to them. He was watching as Noah, face rapturous, executed a series of increasingly elaborate tricks. He skated up ramps and into the air, careened across railings at an alarming speed, flipped and spun the borrowed board with seeming effortlessness.

If it were him, Adam thought he would have mixed feelings about skateboards, after being beaten to death with one. But that was clearly the farthest thing from Noah’s mind as he narrowly avoided crashing into another skater, laughed with his head thrown back, and did a kickflip.

Set against the nonchalance and concentration of the other skaters, Noah’s glee stood out, and it was starting to drawing attention. That worried Adam, until he saw that the other skaters regarded Noah’s unbridled joy with amusement, rather than annoyance or suspicion. He couldn’t blame them: under the harsh flood lights of the skate park, with his white-blond hair a wavy halo almost too bright to look at, Noah was a beautiful thing.

“Your friend’s pretty fucking good,” said AP Biology. He waited until Noah was looking and waved him over. Noah obliged, pink-cheeked with exertion.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Ten bucks says you can’t do a casper flip,” dared the guy (Adam thought his name was something with a B: Brandon, or Bradley, or possibly Brent).

Adam was pretty sure that couldn’t be the real name of something, but Noah grinned. His smile was a lot more lopsided than Adam remembered, and for some reason, seeing it made his stomach do a small flip of its own.

“Casper? Casper’s kind of my specialty,” Noah said. He met Adam’s gaze and raised his eyebrows just a touch, but it was plenty to convey his amusement at the name. Since he had learned the truth about Noah, Ronan had never ceased to buy him every bit of _Casper the Friendly Ghost_ merchandise he could find: the uglier, the better. The intimacy of the shared, secret joke was thrilling.

“Twenty and you’re on,” Noah said. Adam thought that was a bold move, considering Noah didn’t even have _one dollar_ , much less twenty. He hoped Noah knew what he was doing.

“Deal.”

Quickly and without ceremony, Noah positioned himself and flipped the board upside down, one foot on top and one on bottom, all his weight perched on the tail end of the board. Just as quickly, he righted the board, landing solidly. He did it a few more times after, twisting around, moving fluidly in and out of the trick, blatantly showing off.

It struck Adam then, just how little he knew about Noah. This was a whole side to him that Adam had never seen, never imagined. Who had taught him to skate? How long had he been doing it? A long time, clearly. What else didn’t he know? How many more dimensions were there to his friends that he had never witnessed?

Brandon/Bradley/Brent seemed impressed. “I’ll make it fifty if you can do a merlin twist,” he said, and Adam wondered if there was some kind of unwritten rule about all skateboarding tricks having stupid names.

Noah skated off to give himself enough starting momentum. When he was level with the group, he kicked the board in the air, flipping it horizontally in a circle before landing again. To Adam, it was basically indistinguishable from every other kind of trick Noah had been doing since they got there, but judging by the general reaction, it must have been a challenging one.

Adam didn’t know how long Noah would have kept on like that, if it hadn’t started to rain. It was one of those fast Virginia downpours, creeping up slowly for hours and then breaking all at once. There was no shelter from it to be found at the skate park, and by the time Noah had gotten his money, returned the skateboard to its owner, and made it back to the Hondayota, he was soaked. But he did not rush through the rain like Adam did, head ducked, terrified that Ronan’s phone break if even a drop of water touched it. Instead he ambled, face turned upwards, laughing as the huge raindrops splattered against his forehead, and eyelids, and cheeks.

Adam watched him from inside the car and wondered how long it had been since he had felt that kind of wonder at anything.

On their way back from the skate park, Gansey texted to say that the line at the corn maze was longer than expected.

“He sent a picture,” Noah said. He was sitting with his feet propped up on the dashboard, reading the texts aloud to Adam, “Blue’s wearing Gansey’s coat. It’s too big and she looks really cute. And Ronan appears to be setting himself on fire.”

“He what?” Adam asked. His good ear was facing Noah, but he thought he must have misheard. 

“You know those jeans he wears that are pre-ripped, and how they have those little stringy bits that hang down? He’s lighting one of those on fire.” Belatedly, he added, “I’m sure Gansey won’t let him actually injure himself.”

Adam shrugged as if to indicate he wasn’t so sure.

“Anyway, the last text says, ‘Go ahead and eat without us, see you at 9 o’clock or thereabouts.’ He really typed ‘thereabouts’,” Noah said, grinning. “Can we get tacos?” He pointed out the car window to a cheap, pseudo-Mexican fast food place. 

Adam raised one eyebrow. “Are you sure you don’t want to go somewhere… better?” He didn’t mind, of course. Adam’s taste in food was indiscriminate by necessity. But he had assumed that Noah would be pickier, because he had grown up rich like Gansey and Ronan, and because this was his first meal in over seven years.

“I like this place,” was the only justification Noah gave, so Adam pulled in to the drive-thru. At the speaker, he cranked down his window and turned to Noah, ready to repeat whatever he wanted. Noah, however, had already unbuckled his seatbelt, and proceeded to climb onto his lap and lean out the window.

“I want thirty tacos and five orders of churros,” Noah said, “Please.”

“Noah,” Adam hissed, hot in the cheeks. Noah’s face was only an inch away from his, but he didn’t seem at all bothered by the proximity. 

“Not enough?” Noah asked, with genuine uncertainty.

“Too much,” Adam whispered, but the person taking their order had already told them their total, and it suddenly seemed too embarrassing to ask Noah to change it. There were at least two cars behind them. Adam wondered if they could see the way Noah was draped across him.

“Do you mind? You’re crushing me,” he snapped, which wasn’t strictly true, but it made Noah slide back into his own seat.

When they pulled up and got the food, Noah pressed the cash he’d just won into Adam’s hand.

“I can pay for half,” Adam said, but Noah was shaking his head.

“No way, man. I’ve gotta spend all this tonight. You know what they say: you can’t take it with you.”

So Adam let him.

Adam had always thought of Monmouth as Gansey’s, and to a lesser extent Ronan’s. Even though Noah lived there—well, _lived_ wasn’t the right word—he didn’t make as much of an impression on the place. Those first few weeks after he left his parents’ trailer, Adam had stayed in Noah’s room, slept in Noah’s bed, but he had never really thought of them as _Noah’s_.

That wasn’t the case, tonight. Adam followed Noah back into his little room, feeling unaccountably nervous – a feeling that was not lessened when Noah started pulling off his wet clothes and throwing them on the floor, without any sign of self-consciousness.

“I’ll get you a towel for your hair,” Noah said, and padded off, leaving Adam to stand there, dripping, holding a heavy bag of tacos. When Noah returned, he was wearing an old sweater of Gansey’s and what Adam was sure were Gansey’s boxer briefs. Adam looked, then looked away quickly. It wasn’t all that scandalous, except that he had never seen Noah in anything but the rumpled Aglionby uniform he died in. Anything less seemed like complete nakedness.

“Here,” Noah said, swapping the pile of clothes and towel he was carrying for the tacos. Adam wasn’t sure whether Noah expected him to change here, or to go elsewhere to do it. Noah didn’t seem to care either way. He had promptly sat cross-legged on the bed, and was now staring at a churro as if he had never seen anything so strange in all his life. Delicately, experimentally, he took a bite.

“This is unbelievable,” Noah said, biting off a larger piece and chewing with great relish. “This is the most delicious thing on Earth.”

Adam somehow suspected it was not, in fact, the most delicious thing on Earth. But he knew how hunger could make even terrible food taste amazing. Satisfied that Noah was sufficiently distracted, he peeled off his cold, wet clothes and changed into the dry ones Noah had provided. Fortunately, Noah had given him more than just underwear. Adam would have felt more uneasy borrowing Gansey’s clothes, if Gansey had been there, but so long as he changed before Gansey got back, no one had to know.

They ate together, mostly in silence, punctuated by the occasional groan or exclamation of delight from Noah. Adam couldn’t help smiling at him. When they were done, Adam put the leftovers in the fridge, and Noah threw their wet clothes in the dryer.

“It’s so cold in here,” Noah complained, crossing his arms tightly.

“You could put on pants,” Adam advised, drily.

“Or!” said Noah, slipping into his bed and pulling the blankets up to his chin.

“Or that,” said Adam. His throat felt suddenly dry. Was Noah trying to hint that it was time for Adam to leave for the night? Adam was good at reading people, but Noah was often a cipher to him.

“Join me,” Noah said, pulling back the covers on the opposite side. He didn’t seem to think there was anything strange at all about climbing in bed half-dressed and then asking his friend to come on in. Was this just Noah misunderstanding boundaries, the way he sometimes did? Was it a normal enough offer, and Adam simply had never had enough close friends to know that? Or, Adam wondered, was it just possible that telling him to climb in the bed was forward, and Noah knew it was forward, and the invitation was an _invitation_.

“I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.” Noah sat up a little straighter, and for the first time that night, Adam saw his shyness come back, his awkwardness and uncertainty. “I don’t want you to feel obligated, or weird. I just thought…” Noah trailed off, shrugged. A vivid blush was spreading down his cheeks, and he didn’t meet Adam’s eyes. Definitely the third option, then.

Adam felt as if the ground were tilting beneath his feet. Never, in a million years, would he have considered that Noah might be attracted to him. It had been improbable enough that Blue would go on even one date with him. Even more improbable, that someone like Ronan would look at him with such keen interest. But for Noah, too, to see something in Adam Parrish worthy of wanting… _impossible_.

And yet there he was, sweater-clad arms wrapped around his legs, chewing his lower lip, waiting for Adam to say something.

Adam did not say anything, but he did climb into the bed.

A few months ago, he would not have done it. Even now, half his brain was screaming that this was a mistake. It was reckless, and bound to have terrible consequences one way or another. Adam had not survived this long by making impulsive decisions without thinking them through first. The last time he’d made a choice this spontaneously, he had woken up the ley line, and that night had very nearly ended in his messy murder. The smart thing to do would be to excuse himself and go home.

But the bed was warm, and Noah’s fingertips against his neck as he pulled him into a kiss were heart-breakingly soft. Adam wasn’t sure he liked Noah (at least, not in the way that he thought people were supposed to like one another in this kind of situation) but he did trust him. And trust, for Adam Parrish, was a far more challenging thing than love. Besides, it was wonderful—intoxicating—to be wanted. Was it selfish to kiss Noah primarily because he wanted to be wanted? Was it pathetic? Adam didn’t know. He didn’t know what Noah thought this meant, didn’t want to lead him on or lie to him.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Noah said, breaking the kiss to rest his forehead against Adam’s. “No strings attached, no need to worry, okay?”

Adam didn’t know if Noah was performing his usual trick of responding to things that had not been said aloud, or if the worry was so clear on his face that Noah had guessed at his thoughts. Either way, he was glad. It would be nice, to have something simple. To not worry for once. To just let himself enjoy the way Noah’s body felt pressed up next to his.

“Okay.”

It wasn’t that Adam had never been kissed before. There had been a few, fleeting kisses, with girls in middle school. But those had been childish kisses, fumbling and perfunctory, more playacting than reality. Kissing Noah, slow and lazy in his bed, was entirely another affair. There was still a little fumbling: Noah’s nose kept getting in the way, and they had to stop at one point for Adam to get a hair out of the corner of his mouth. But those moments of levity made the rest of it easier.

Adam tried to keep an eye on the time, but after a while he stopped checking. Stopped thinking at all. The more heat built between them, the less his brain seemed to work, and it was wonderful. All his self-consciousness and worry submerged temporarily, and there was only Noah’s body moving against his. They kissed and rocked together, a tangle of limbs and hot breath.

“I’m gonna be honest,” Noah said, pulling away just far enough that he could talk. His mouth was red from kissing. Adam’s gut sank in anticipation of some problem— that he was a terrible kisser, that it had all been a prank all along. “I kind of really want to give you a blowjob right now.”

“I—what?!” Adam said. It was so radically different from what he’d expected that for a moment, he didn’t understand.

“Is that a no?” Noah asked, and Adam realized he’d been asking for permission.

“No. I mean, no it’s not a no.” Noah was grinning that lopsided grin, and Adam felt a little involuntary jolt of excitement. He bit his bottom lip, and nodded.

“Awesome,” Noah said, and began to kiss his way down Adam’s stomach. Adam suddenly felt light-headed and fairly certain that any second now, he was going to wake up, and this all would have been a dream. But he didn’t.

“It’s been a little while since I did this,” Noah warned, pulling down Adam’s sweatpants and boxers. “I may be a bit rusty.”

“Not like I have anything to compare it to,” Adam said, a bit breathlessly, parting his legs a little wider to give Noah room.

“Good point,” Noah said, and got to work. His mouth was hot and slick and Adam let his head fall back against the pillow, biting his knuckle to keep from groaning out loud. Getting a blowjob felt both better and stranger than he had anticipated. Adam lifted his hips off the bed, toes curling with enjoyment. It also was louder than he had imagined, and after a few seconds of wet sounds, he couldn’t help laughing.

Noah stopped, checking to make sure he was okay. “What?”

“It’s just so—” Adam could hardly get the words out between giggles. He covered his face with his hands and imitated the sound with one loud, rude slurping noise.

Noah rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. Seeing Adam so relaxed, hearing him laugh like he’d had never heard him laugh before—it was better than the skating, better than the food, better than anything. Noah felt a rush of affection for Adam, dipped his head back down to suck at a soft patch of skin on his inner thigh, leaving a bright red bruise. When Adam stopped laughing and caught his breath again, Noah went back to sucking his dick. Adam immediately began to laugh again, but Noah just flipped him off and kept at it, and eventually, his laughs broke off into hitched breaths and bitten-back whimpers. It wasn’t very long before Adam was tensing up, back arching off the bed. Noah knew he was close and picked up the pace.

Adam’s orgasm face was just as marvelous as Noah had imagined, but he didn’t have much time to appreciate it. Like some kind of horrible cue, the moment Adam came, Noah heard the distinctive sound of the Pig’s engine roaring up next to the building.

It was obvious that Adam had heard, too. His hazy, rather blissful look went away, replaced with the more familiar tightness of worry. He shot out of the bed and started to rearrange his hair, which Noah took to mean that he didn’t want the others to know what they’d been doing. That didn’t surprise Noah, very much. Adam was a very discreet sort of person.

Noah got their clothes from the drier, and both of them got dressed at top speed. They had just zipped their flies when they heard the sound of the door opening and Blue’s voice saying, “Trick or treat?”


	3. Blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The special they are watching is 'The Halloween Tree'.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has read this and left such hilarious and encouraging comments. Writing can be hard and I constantly second-guess myself that I am terrible at it, but you all really keep me going, and I appreciate it more than I can say.

Noah found himself crammed once again into the backseat of the Pig, with Blue between him and Adam. It felt wrong to have her sitting so near, when only five minutes before he’d had Adam’s dick in his mouth. Everything was too close. There needed to be more buffer: more space between their bodies, more time between hearing the way Adam’s breath caught and hearing Gansey rhapsodizing about corn mazes. The proximity felt obscene. He wished Ronan hadn’t rushed them out of the door so quickly.

Pressing his hot forehead against the cool window, Noah sighed. _Think unsexy thoughts,_ he scolded himself silently. _Math homework. Going to the dentist. Hangovers. Papercuts._ He had forgotten how uncooperative bodies could be. He knew he wasn’t hiding his awkwardness or discomfort very well, but fortunately, he usually seemed awkward and uncomfortable, so no one even noticed.

Adam, for his part, was calmer. Once the initial surprise of his friends’ arrival wore off, he remembered something he had known for years: that most of the time, people weren’t very observant. Everyone thought he was so smart, but the truth was, he just paid attention. It had started as a survival mechanism and become as automatic as breathing. Blue and Ronan and Gansey were too happy and too distracted to notice if anything was amiss. So he stopped worrying that they would, closed his eyes and listened to Gansey expounding on the dozens of times that people in scary costumes had leapt out at them.

“Guess who screamed the most?” Ronan asked, raising his eyebrows and nodding at Blue smugly.

“That honor belongs to Gansey,” she contradicted, kicking the back of Ronan’s seat for good measure.

“Screaming is half the fun at a place like that. I was playing it up for the sake of the group,” Gansey said, with dignity.

Blue rolled her eyes. “How magnanimous of you.” 

“It’s here,” Ronan interrupted, pointing at a tiny shop tucked away between a Chinese restaurant and a dance studio. The sign simply read ‘TATTOOS’.

“Are you guys sure you want to go through with this?” Adam asked, with a pointed look at Gansey. He didn’t think clean-cut golden sons of Republican Congressional candidates were even _allowed_ to get tattoos. But, on second thought, Gansey could probably get away with it. On him, a tattoo would be just the perfect amount hip and quirky. Rich kids could get tattoos without people immediately assuming they were low-lives. It wasn’t like that for Adam. He had to be careful about his image.

“Don’t worry, Parrish. You can get yours somewhere no one will see it,” Ronan said, as if reading his thoughts.

“It’s hardly the craziest thing we’ve done,” Gansey remarked, parking at the curb. They all climbed out of the Pig and into the rain.

“That’s only because the base level of crazy we operate at is dangerously high,” Noah pointed out.

“Are they closed?” Blue asked. The front of the store didn’t look promising: the shades were drawn, and the neon ‘OPEN’ sign was unilluminated.

“Relax. I set it up this afternoon,” Ronan said. He rapped his knuckles on the glass of the door and, a few moments later, a woman with bright aquamarine hair was letting them inside. She and Ronan obviously knew one another well. Noah’s guess that she must be the artist who did his back tattoo was confirmed when she said, “Come on, let me see,” and Ronan, obligingly, lifted his tank top over his head and turned his bare back towards her. She _hmmed_ and nodded, proprietary and satisfied.

“How did the design come out?” Ronan asked her, and the rest of them craned their necks to see as she held up a small drawing of a raven, its beak open and its wings lifted.

“Is a raven too Aglionby?” Noah asked, with an anxious glance at Blue. He knew how she felt excluded sometimes because she was the only one of them who had never gone to Aglionby, and he wanted to stick up for her.

Gansey said, “It’s to represent Glendower,” at the same moment Ronan said, “It’s Chainsaw, she’s our mascot.”

“I love it,” Blue said, meeting Noah’s eyes and smiling as if to say that she understood what he’d been trying to do and appreciated it.

Noah was pretty sure that, normally, there would be forms to fill out, payment details to be discussed, but Ronan had smoothed everything over in advance. The woman led them into a room in back with a table and some rather intimidating looking equipment.

“Who’s going first?” she asked.

Ronan pointed at Noah, who was just then remembering what queasiness felt like. He knew why he had to go first, of course. The others could chicken out and still come back another day to get theirs, if they wanted. He was the only one whose window of opportunity was relatively narrow.

“Does it hurt a lot?” he asked the woman, rather tremulously.

“Wimp,” Ronan scoffed, under his breath.

“Depends on where you get it,” the woman said. Kindly, she added, “I bet you’re tougher than you think.”

Noah wasn’t so sure about that. But he hopped up onto the table regardless, and indicated where he wanted the tattoo: the pale underside of his left wrist. The woman nodded and got to work preparing the area.

“You can come back in a few days for touch-ups,” she said.

“No, by then I won’t have a body anymore,” Noah said. He realized a moment too late that maybe he should have lied. He wasn’t used to lying about being dead: it had never been a problem, before. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Blue cover her face with her hands.

“That was a joke,” he added, unconvincingly, “Like, I won’t have a body anymore because, um, ghosts, and- you know, it’s Halloween, so...” he trailed off, shrugging. Ronan was grinning gleefully at his fumbling, and Gansey looked ready to swoop in and smooth things over if it got any worse.

“Oh, I get it. That’s funny,” the woman said, clearly just humoring him because he was a customer. “Now, let’s get started.”

Blue was the next to go after Noah, and once her tattoo was finished, he agreed to walk her home while the other three stayed to get theirs. The tattoo parlor was only a few blocks from her house; she could have walked it on her own. But she’d asked Noah to come with her because she wanted more time with him.

“That hurt a lot less than I thought it would,” she said. She had gotten her tattoo at the place where the back of her neck met her shoulders. There was a dull, hot ache there now, beneath the bandage. Blue wasn’t sure why exactly she had chosen that spot. Partly, it was somewhere she could cover with her hair if she had to. Partly, she liked the idea that she, a mirror, would need a mirror to see it.

Partly, too, she had been thinking of the future. Anticipating a time after Gansey died, when seeing the tattoo and being reminded of these days would hurt.

“Speak for yourself,” Noah said, glumly. “I’m not used to feeling stuff. Everything’s a lot more intense than I remembered. Pain sucks.” 

“Yeah,” Blue said. She slipped her hand into his, lacing their fingers together. “Noah, I have a confession.” Noah raised his eyebrows in a silent question. “I had an ulterior motive, bringing you with me. This is your one opportunity to change your look, right? Well, I know for a fact that Calla’s got about three different colors of hair dye stashed in the bathroom, and I thought maybe—”

“We could dye mine,” Noah finished for her. The smile on his face was childlike in its sudden and genuine glee. How could she worry about the future—or anything at all—confronted with a smile like that? “Blue, you’re a genius. You’re the most brilliant girl I’ve ever met.”

Blue blushed, but she was internally pleased at the force and immediacy of Noah’s enthusiasm for the idea.

“Super,” she said.

“Why’s there only ever one girl in movies like this?” Blue said.

An animated Halloween special was playing on the old CRT television in the living room of 300 Fox Way. Blue was stretched out on the worn couch, with her head resting on Noah’s thigh, careful not to put any pressure on the bandage covering her tattoo. Noah, for his part, had a towel around his shoulders and was being careful not to drip on anything. He couldn’t quite believe he was there. He had never seen the inside of Blue’s house before, but he immediately loved everything about it, just as he had immediately loved everything about Blue.

It was a family home, in a way that Monmouth most certainly was not. Everything about it spoke of economical, chaotic domesticity. The laundry basket in the corner, which was full of socks waiting to be paired, still sported a few heavily-faded stickers on it – a rainbow, a unicorn, a star with one of the points torn off. Some child had stuck them on as decoration years before – Blue, or perhaps Orla. A pair of reading glasses and some nail clippers sat on a reader’s digest beside the lamp, which was itself a kitschy remnant of the 70s. The bookshelves were well-dusted but disorganized, dotted with knick-knacks. There were cat toys, though Noah saw no evidence of a cat; an old plastic yogurt container that, when opened, was full of hairbands of assorted elasticity and color; and an actual crystal ball. 

“Do you want me to change it to something else?” Noah asked. 

“No,” Blue said, “I just don’t see why it couldn’t be four girls and one boy for a change? I bet it never even crossed their minds. I bet they think having one girl is more than enough.”

“You’re one girl who is friends with four boys,” Noah pointed out.

“Don’t remind me,” Blue muttered darkly.

They went back to watching in companionable silence, though Noah was paying more attention to the weight of Blue’s head on his lap than he was to the film. His back felt uncomfortable and he wanted to shift his position, but he didn’t dare.

“My scalp itches,” he complained, scrunching his nose in discomfort.

“Don’t touch it,” Blue warned, “You need to wait another half hour before you can wash the dye out.”

“I hope it stays,” Noah said, for perhaps the tenth time.

“Me too.”

A little while later, Blue heard the sound of the front door opening. Calla came in, resplendent in an elaborately witchy outfit, all shawls and swaying skirts and smoky eye. She stomped loudly into the room and said, “We need that extra crystal ball, there are more people at this party than we thought and the line is getting out of hand.”

“I don’t know where it is,” Blue said, eyes still on the TV.

“That one?” Noah asked, voice small, pointing to the bookshelf.

Calla turned to him, seeming to notice him for the first time, and then looked to where he was pointing. She picked up the crystal ball and asked shrewdly, “You’re the one the ritual was for? The ghost?”

“Yes.” Noah couldn’t help shrinking away from Calla. He felt intimidated by her without knowing exactly why.

“And that is my hot pink hair dye.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes. I’m sorry, Blue said—”

But Calla waved a hand, cutting him off midsentence, “It suits you.” She turned to Blue then, told her, “I doubt anyone will get back home before tomorrow morning, so you’ve got the house to yourselves.” Blue felt her face growing hot. She didn’t know if that was supposed to be some kind of warning, or an invitation. “Be sure you get this one back to his bones by daybreak.”

With that, Calla stomped back out the door, crystal ball in hand.

“Halloween’s a busy night for psychics. People hire my mom and the rest of them to tell fortunes all night at parties all up and down the valley. They make a lot. Plenty of people who would never go to a psychic on a normal day will buy a reading on Halloween.”

“I see.”

“So…” Blue tried to keep her voice nonchalant, “I guess we have the place to ourselves for a while.”

“Guess so,” Noah said.

When the timer went off, Noah reluctantly abandoned the couch and went to wash the excess dye from his hair. It was more nerve-wracking than he had anticipated. His nakedness felt _more_ naked because he was in Blue’s house. The door to the bathroom hung strangely on its hinge and didn’t close perfectly, so that it was impossible to lock, or even to trust it to stay closed. Added to that was the fact that he wasn’t supposed to get his tattoo wet, so he would have to keep one arm sticking out the shower curtain, well away from the water. The shower itself was old and ornery: he had a brief and very shocking reminder of just how unpleasant it could be, getting a shower to the correct temperature.

“Everything alright in there?” Blue asked through the door, attracted no doubt by Noah’s loud yelps as he fiddled with the cold and hot taps.

“Fine!”

Then, to Noah’s horror, he heard the door opening. He thought it must be swinging open on its own, at the most inopportune moment. But then he turned and saw Blue edging into the steamy bathroom with a rather determined look on her face.

Noah stood still, staring at her through the gap in the shower curtain. He didn’t know what else to do. His horror evaporated when he realized that Blue had let herself in deliberately. If the door had opened on its own, his nakedness would have been an unwanted imposition. But her coming in on her own was something else entirely.

“I’m waiting ‘til it runs clear before I wash it,” he said, because he didn’t know what else _to_ say.

Blue nodded. To Noah, it looked like she was struggling with herself, to make some kind of decision.

“Are you okay?” Noah asked, so softly that he was barely audible over the running shower.

His words broke through her reverie, and Blue looked up decisively. Instead of replying, she pulled her shirts over her head, threw them onto the floor. Noah caught a glimpse of her bra—black, thin-strapped, functional—before he looked away. It was instinctual, to avert his eyes and give her privacy. He muttered a quick, “Sorry.”

“No, it’s— I want you to look,” Blue said.

Noah’s mouth was suddenly very dry. He swallowed, and looked.

There was no particular art in the way that Blue kicked off her shoes, or peeled off her skirt and leggings. But the raw awkward honesty of it was endearing. Noah watched without a word as she pulled the clips and elastic band from her hair, as she reached back to unhook her bra. The heap of her clothes slowly joined the heap of his clothes on the bathroom floor.

Noah shut off the shower and opened the curtain. He wanted, at the very least, to even the odds. It felt wrong to see without being seen; if Blue was brave enough to stand in front of him without anything at all to hide behind, then he could be brave enough to do the same.

Once she was naked Blue simply stood there, her boldness giving way to hesitation. She made a gesture with her arms as if to say _Well, this is it._ As if she were expecting Noah to be disappointed by her body.

“Blue, you’re—” He didn’t know if complimenting her was the right thing to do: if it would make her feel better, or worse. Maybe saying something would only make her feel objectified, or pitied, and Noah didn’t want that. But saying nothing felt wrong. “You’re really beautiful. Like, it’s a good thing I’m already dead because you’re drop-dead gorgeous.”

The humor seemed to do the trick. A smile worked its way onto Blue’s face and she shook her head. She climbed into the shower next to him and turned the water back on, directing the spray at Noah and away from herself.

“Let’s get the rest of this out of your hair, first.”

Noah didn’t know what was second, but whatever it was, he was on board. He closed his eyes as Blue squeezed a dab of shampoo in her hands and, without further ado, began to wash his hair for him. What a strange tableau they must make, he thought. Him, with his bandaged arm still stuck out to the side, bowing his head so that Blue could wash it. Blue, reaching up high to work the lather through his hair, getting pink all over her hands.

“Would it be easier if I sat down?” Noah asked, half-teasing, which earned him a swat from Blue.

Then, about thirty seconds later, she said, “Actually, yes.” Her arms were getting tired.

So Noah perched on the rim of the bathtub, face level with Blue’s stomach. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had washed his hair for him. He hadn’t realized quite how pleasant it would feel, how intimate. Noah let himself drift amongst the pleasant sensations – the heat of the steamy air, Blue’s hands pulling at his hair, the smell of the shampoo, the excitement of being this close to her.

While she was working conditioner into his hair, he asked, “Can I…?” with a hand poised a few inches from her hip.

“Yeah,” Blue said, voice lower than usual, “Go ahead.”

So Noah began to touch her – ran his fingers down her side, up her spine. He felt her shivering. It was easier to get past the initial hurdle of awkwardness than it had been the first time they kissed. That kiss had laid a foundation between them, and now it seemed comparatively easy to touch and be touched without too much uncertainty.

Noah kissed his way across her stomach, just above the start of her pubic hair. Blue’s hands tightened in his hair momentarily. He was pretty sure it was clean by now, and that she was just playing with it for the sensation alone. She was so different to how Adam had been just a few hours before, her body soft in places where his had been bony, her skin dark and zig-zagged with stretch marks that reminded him of lightning. When he looked up at her, Blue’s eyes were half-lidded and full of _want_.

“Blue, what would you like me to—”

Which was as far as Noah got before Orla burst in the door.


End file.
